The present invention relates to a hybrid data plug with a plurality of electrical contacts and a plurality of light waveguides.
Such a hybrid data plug is produced or marketed by the firms Stewart Connector and Thomas and Betts. The prior art hybrid plug has a pair of electrical contacts for electronic signal transmission or electric voltage supply as well as two light waveguides for optical signal transmission. Each of the two light waveguides is accommodated in its own ferrule. The two ferrules are arranged laterally in the housing of the hybrid plug and are spaced a predetermined distance from one another. The pair of electrical contacts is arranged at the upper side of the plug housing in the region between the two ferrules.
Since in the connection technology of light waveguides, such as glass fibers extremely high requirements are generally set with respect to dimensional accuracy or positioning of the junction points in relation to each other in order to achieve a lower insertion loss, a higher outlay is necessary in order to arrange the two ferrules of the prior art plug in the plug housing with the required dimensional accuracy within the prescribed tolerances.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a data plug with efficient assembly of the light waveguides while maintaining the required precision and electrical conductors.
This object is inventively achieved by a hybrid data plug having a plurality of electrical contacts and a plurality of light waveguides, whereby the light waveguides are arranged in a single ferrule.
The expression xe2x80x9cdata plugxe2x80x9d is to be understood as referring to not only the actual plug but also its counterpart, namely the socket or plug receptacle.
The inventive hybrid data plug (and also the appertaining inventive socket or plug receptacle) has the advantage that only a single ferrule is required and oriented in the plug housing. A considerable outlay in the production of the plug is saved in comparison to the modular plug of the prior art described above, and the production costs of the inventive plug are accordingly lower.
The inventive hybrid plug has the further advantage that it can be employed when a data transmission is implemented only over electrical cabling or only over light waveguides, or when not only a data transmission on glass fibers but also a data transmission on electrical cables is implemented. Costly conversion modules which are otherwise required in order to be able to alternate from electrical data transmission to optical data transmission and vice versa are avoided by means of the inventive plug on the basis of not only the existing optical contacting but also the existing electrical contacting. This means that as long as an electrical data transmission is utilized, the copper cores in the inventive plug (or in the inventive socket, accordingly) are used. When there is then a change to an optical transmission, the light waveguides, or respectively, glass fibers in the inventive data plug are used.
An arrangement wherein the single ferrule is arranged in the region between the two contact pairs is preferred. For example, the ferrule can extend in the middle, or respectively, in the center of the plug or plug housing, whereby one of the electrical contact pairs is respectively arranged at the left edge region, or respectively, right edge region of the housing, as seen from the ferrule. This means that the ferrule is provided in the region between the electrical contact pairs. The electrical contacts of the inventive data plug are preferably arranged in pairs. The data plugs can have two pairs of electrical contacts or four pairs, etc.
Four electrical contacts are preferably provided. In a hybrid plug with two pairs of electrical contacts the contact pairs are arranged in the plug housing such that they are far removed from each other. In one embodiment, the contacts are 1,2-7,8 according to IEC 60603. The crosstalk attenuation between the contact pairs is thereby increased.
In another embodiment, four pairs of electrical contacts are preferably provided. Four pairs of electrical contacts can be used in data plugs for electrical transmission according to gigabit Ethernet (1000 base-T), for example. The ferrule is preferably located in the region between the two pairs of electrical contacts, whereby the data plug preferably has a cross-section which is orthogonal with respect to the longitudinal extent of the light waveguide. The two pairs of electrical contacts lie in an edge region of the cross-section at a distance from each other. An optimally great spatial separation of the electrical contacts in the data plug is achieved with these advantageous developments.
The data plug preferably has a cross section that is orthogonal to the longitudinal extent of the light waveguide. The ferrule is provided in the center of the cross-section in order to achieve a high symmetry of the data plug, thus simplifying assembly.